Mike Carruthers

We need to...

We need to feel like we're in control and to feel like it's out of our control would be difficult.

Is there any formula to this in the sense that, I mean, we've probably all thought of things that maybe could have become great ideas that could have gone on to do great things, but it's very easily, those things are very easy to dismiss and just steamroll over them and get on to the next video or podcast that you want to watch or listen to.

Is there a way to go, wait, stop, I want to stop and look at this?

But it does seem that, you know, when you talk about this topic,

A lot of the usual suspects show up.

Post-it notes, Velcro, those things that make it seem like this is very rare, there's only a few we can really point to, penicillin, potato chips, but that generally most ideas aren't going anywhere.

But it doesn't matter because one succeeded.

Sometimes it seems that it isn't the solution as much as the marketing, the way you sell it.

You know, I think of things like Elf on the Shelf.

I mean, come on.

I mean, yeah, it was fun.

It made a lot of money.

But it wasn't some great new innovative penicillin-like idea.

It was a doll.

Where great ideas come from.

That's what we're talking about today with Paul Sloan.

He's author of the book, The Art of Unexpected Solutions.

So Paul, since you study this, do these successful ideas have anything in common that you can point to

that if somebody said to you, okay, so I wanna get more involved in this.